Sunday, March 08, 2015

... But most people, I gather, think that O’Brien’s trip to Cuba was really cool.

These
visitors are like Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes: “I see nothing”
— beyond the pretty girls, the classic old cars, the swaying palm
trees, etc.

Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri,
was just in Cuba. She met with no dissidents, of course. While she was
there, more than 100 were arrested, for such crimes as trying to attend
church. The American said nothing.

She did, however, post
pictures of old cars to the Internet. Isn’t that cute? There have long
been political pilgrims to totalitarian countries. Paul Hollander has
devoted a good part of his career to chronicling them.

There have been plain old ignoramuses, too.

As
he crossed from Poland into the Soviet Union, George Bernard Shaw threw
his food tins out the train window, because there would be no need of
them in the land of milk and honey.

He denied that there was
famine in the Soviet Union, because there was plenty of food in his
hotel — the Moscow Metropol, which was for foreigners only. They have
that kind of hotel in Cuba, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith went to
Communist China during the Cultural Revolution, when millions were being
starved, tortured, humiliated, and killed. He came back with a
criticism: The Chinese smoked too many cigarettes.

In my
observation, most Cubans and Cuban Americans bear no great grudge
against visitors — as long as they show some moral awareness. As long as
they have a smidgeon of conscience.

Conan O’Brien was able to
flit down there and then flit back home. Does he realize what happens to
ordinary Cubans if they try to leave the island? Does he realize that
they have been shot and killed in the water, as they desperately try to
escape?

I sometimes wish that people in free countries could be
sentenced to live in unfree ones — just for a while — in order to
appreciate what other people have to endure, and what they themselves
have to be grateful for.